Renn Doss, the false friend, saw the danger of the recognition of the
firearms by Carline. The savage swing of a half pound of fine shot
braided up in a rawhide bag, and a good aim, reduced Carline to an inert
figure of a man. "Renn Doss" was Hilt Despard, pirate captain, whose
instantaneous action always had served him well in moments of peril.
The three men carried Carline to a bunk and dropped him on it. They
covered him up and emptied a cupful of whiskey on his pillow and
clothes. They even poured a few spoonfuls down his throat. They thus
changed him to what might be called a "natural condition."
Then, sitting around the stove, they whispered among themselves,
discussing what they had better do. Half a hundred possibilities
occurred to their fertile fancies and replete memories. Men and women
who have always led sheltered lives can little understand or know what a
pirate must understand and know even to live let alone be successful.
"What's Terabon up to?" Despard demanded. "Here he is, drappin' down by
Fort Pillow Landing, running around. Where's that girl he had up above
New Madrid? What's his game? Coming up here and talking to us? Asking us
all about the river and things--writin' it for the newspapers?"
"That woman's this Carline's wife!" Jet sneered.
"Sure! An' here's Terabon an' here's Carline. Terabon don't talk none
about that woman--nor about Carline," Dock grumbled.
"I bet Terabon would be sorry none if Carline hyar dropped out. Y' know
she's Old Crele's gal," Jet said. "Crele's a good feller. Sent word
down to have us take cyar of her, an' Prebol, the fool, didn't know 'er,
hadn't heard. Look what she give him, bang in the shoulder! That old
Prophet'll take cyar of him, course. See how hit works out. She shined
up to Terabon, all right."
"I 'low I better talk to him," Despard suggested. "Terabon's a good
sport. He said, you' know, that graftin' and whiskey boatin', an'
robbin' the bank wa'n't none of his business. He said, course, he could
write it down in his notes, but without names, 'count of somebody might
read somethin' in them an' get some good friend of his in Dutch. He said
it wouldn't be right for him to know about somebody robbin' a
commissary, or a bank, or killin' somebody, because if somebody like a
sheriff or detective got onto it, they might blame him, or somethin'."
"I like that Terabon!" Jet declared. "Y'see how he is. He says he's
satisfied, makin' a fair living, gettin' notes so's he can write them
magazine stories, an' if he was to try to rob the banks, he'd have to
learn how, same's writin' for newspapers. An' probably he wouldn't have
the nerve to do it really, 'count of his maw and paw bein' the kind they
was. He told me hisself that they made him go to Sunday school when he
was a kid, an' things like that spoil a man for graftin'. Stands to
reason, all right, the way he talks. I like him; he knows enough to mind
his own business."
"He's comin' up to-night to go after geese on the bar. We'll talk to
him. He'll look that business over, level-headed. That motorboat any
good?"
"Nothin' extra. He's got ready money, though, I forgot that," Despard
grinned, walking over to the hapless victim of his black-jack skill.
The three divided nearly thirteen hundred dollars among them. The money
made them good humoured and they had some compassion for their prisoner.
One of them noticed that a skiff was coming up from Fort Pillow Landing,
and fifteen minutes later Terabon was talking to Despard on the snag to
one prong of which was fastened the line of Carline's motorboat.
"I was wondering where I'd see you again," Terabon said. "Didn't have a
chance at New Madrid, saw you was in business, so I didn't follow up
none."
"I was wondering if you had a line on that," Despard said, doubtfully.
"Y'know that woman you was staying with up on Island Ten Bar? Well, we
got her man in here full's a fish. Lookin' for his woman, an' he's no
good. Fell off the cabin, hit a spark in the back of the head when the
water sucked when that steamboat went by this morning. He'd ought to go
down to Memphis hospital, but--Well, we can't take 'im. You know how
that is."
"Be glad to help you boys out any way I can," Terabon said. "I'll run
him down."
"Say, would you? We don't want him on our hands," the pirate explained.
"We'd get to see you down b'low some'rs."
"Sure, I would," Terabon exclaimed. "Fact is, the woman said it'd be a
favour to her, too, if I'd get him home. She'll be dropping down likely.
Darn nice girl, but quick tempered."
"That's right; quick ain't no name for it. She plugged a friend of mine
up by Buffalo Island----"
"Prebol? I heard about him. She was scairt."
"She needn't be, never again!" Despard grinned. "When a lady can handle
a river Law like she does, us bad uns are real nice!"
Terabon laughed, and the two went into the cabin-boat where Carline lay
on the bunk. Terabon ran his hand around the man's head and neck, found
the lump near the base of the skull, found that the neck wasn't broken,
and made sure that the heart was beating--things a reporter naturally
learns to do in police-station and hospital experience.
Jet brought the motorboat down to the stern of the cabin-boat, and the
four carried Carline on board. They put him in his bunk, and Terabon,
his skiff towing astern, steered out into the main current and soon
faded down by Craighead Point Bar.
"I knowed he'd be all right," Despard declared. "He'll take him down to
Memphis, and out of our way. I'd 'a' hated to kill him; it ain't no use
killin' a man less'n it's necessary. We got what we was after. Course,
if we'd rewarded him, likely we'd got a lot, but it ain't safe, holdin'
a man for rewards ain't."
"That boat'd been a good one to travel in," Jet suggested.
"Everybody'd knowed it was Carline's, an' it wa'n't worth fixing over.
Hull not much good, and the motor's been abused some. We'll do better'n
that."
They had rid themselves of an incumbrance. They had made an acquaintance
who was making himself useful. They were considerably richer than they
had been for some time.
"I'd like to drap into Mendova," Jet mused. "We ain't had what you'd
call a time----"
"Let's kill some birds first," Gaspard suggested. "I got a hunch that
Yankee Bar's a good bet for us for a little while. We dassn't look into
Memphis, 'count of last trip down. Mendova's all right, but wait'll
we've hunted Yankee Bar."
The money burned in their pockets, but as they stood looking out at the
long, beautiful Yankee Bar its appeal went home. For more than a hundred
years generations of pirates had used there, and no one knows how many
tragedies have left their stain in the great band around from Gold Dust
Landing to Chickasaw Bluffs No. 1.
After dark they rowed over to the point and put out their decoys, dug
their pits, screened them, and brushed over their tracks in the sand.
Then they played cards till midnight, turned in for a little sleep, and
turned out again in the black morning to go to their places with
repeating shotguns and cripple-killer rifles in their hands.
When they were in their places, and the river silence prevailed, they
saw the stars overhead, the reflections on sand and water around them,
and the quivering change as air currents moved in the dark--the things
that walk in the night. They heard, at intervals, many voices. Some they
knew as the fluent music of migrant geese flying over on long laps of
their fall flight, but some they did not know, except that they were
river voices.
Ducks flew by no higher than the tops of the willow trees up the bar,
their wings whistling and their voices eager in the dark. The lurkers
saw these birds darting by like black streaks, tempting vain shots, but
they were old hunters, and knew they wanted at least a little light.
Over on the mainland they heard the noises of wilderness animals, and
away off yonder a mule's "he-haw" reverberated through the bottoms and
over bars and river.
For these things, if the pirates had only known it, they found the world
endurable. Each in his own pit, given over to his own thoughts, they
thrilled to the joy of living. All they wanted, really, was this kind of
thing; hunting in fall and winter, fishing in the summer, and occasional
visits to town for another kind of thrill, another sort of excitement.
But their boyhood had been passed in privation, their youth amid
temptations of appetite and vice, and now they were hopelessly mixed as
to what they liked, what they didn't like, what the world would do for
them, and what they would do to the world. Weaklings, uneducated,
without balance; habit-ridden, yet with all that miserable inheritance
from the world, they waited there rigid, motionless, their hearts
thrilling to the increasing music of the march of dawn across the
bottoms of the Mississippi.
False dawn flushed and faded almost like a deliberate lightning flash.
Then dawn appeared, marking down the gray lines of the wilderness trees
with one stroke, sweeping out all the stars with another brush,
revealing the flocks of birds glistening against the sky while yet the
earth was in shade. The watchers spied a score of birds, great geese far
to the northward, coming right in line with them. They waited for a few
seconds--ages long. Then one of the men cried:
"They're stoopin', boys! They're comin'!"
The wild geese, coming down a magnificent slant from a mile height,
headed straight for Yankee Bar. Will birds never learn? They ploughed
down with their wings folding, and poised. Their voices grew louder and
louder as they approached.
With a hissing roar of their wings they pounded down out of the great,
safe heights and circled around and inward. With a shout the three men
started up through their masks and with levelled guns opened fire.
Too late the old gander at the point of the "V" began to climb; too late
the older birds in the point screamed and gathered their strength. The
river men turned their black muzzles against the necks of the young tail
birds of the feathered procession and brought them tumbling down out of
the line to the ground, where on the hard sand two of them split their
breasts and exposed thick layers of fat dripping with oil.
The cries of the fleeing birds, the echoes of the barking guns, died
away. The men shouted their joy in their success, gathered up their
victims, scurried pack to cover, brushing over their tracks, and
crouched down again, to await another flock.
Hunger drove them to their cabin-boat within an hour. They had thought
they wanted to get some more birds, but in fact they knew they had
enough. They went over to their boat, cooked up a big breakfast, and sat
around the fire smoking and talking it over. They chattered like boys.
They were gleeful, innocent, harmless! But only for a time. Then the
hunted feeling returned to them. Once more they had a back track to
watch and ambushes to be wary of. They wanted to go to Mendova, but
again they didn't want to go there. They didn't know but what Mendova
might be watching for them, the same as Memphis was. Certainly, they
determined, they must go to Mendova after dark, and see a friend who
would put them wise to actual conditions around town.
They took catnaps, having had too little sleep, and yet they could not
sleep deeply. They watched the shanty-boats which dropped down the river
at intervals, most of them in the main current close to the far bank,
and often hardly visible against the mottled background of caving earth,
fallen trees, and flickering mirage. Their restlessness was silent,
morose, and one of them was always on the lookout.
Despard himself was on watch in the afternoon. He sat just inside the
kitchen door, out of the sunshine, in a comfortable rocking chair. Two
windows and the stern door gave him a wide view of the river, sandbars
and eddy. It seemed but a minute, but he had fallen into a doze, when
the splash of a shanty-boat sweeps awakened all the crew with a sudden,
frightened start. Whispers, hardly audible, hailed in alarm. The three,
crouching in involuntary doubt and dismay, glared at the newcomer.
It was a woman drifting in. Apparently she intended to land there, and
the three men stared at her.
"His wife!" Despard said with soundless lips. The others nodded their
recognition.
Mrs. Carline had run into the great dead eddy at the foot of Yankee
Lower Bar, turned up in the slow reverse eddy of the chute, and was
coming by their boat at the slowest possible speed.
Despard pulled his soft shirt collar, straightened his tie, hitched his
suspenders, put on his coat, walked out on the stern deck, and, after a
glance around, seemed suddenly to discover the stranger.
"Howdy!" he nodded, touching his cap respectfully, and gazing with
flickering eyes at the woman whose marksmanship entitled her to the
greatest respect.
"Howdy!" she nodded, scrutinizing him with level eyes. "Where am I?"
"Yankee Bar. Them's Chickasaw Bluffs No. 1."
"Do you know Jest Prebol?"
"Yessum." Despard's head bobbed in alarmed, unwilling assent.
"I thought perhaps you'd like to know that he's getting along all
right."
"I bet he learnt his lesson," Despard grimaced.
"What? I don't just understand."
"About bein' impudent to a lady that can shoot--straight!"
A flicker moved the woman's countenance, and she smiled, oddly.
"Oh, any one is likely to make mistakes!"
"Darn fools is, Miss Crele. And you Old Crele's girl! He might of
knowed!"
The other two stepped out to help enjoy the conversation and the
scenery.
"You know me?" she demanded.
"Yessum, we shore do. My name's Despard--Jet here and Cope."
She acknowledged the introductions.
"I've friends down here," she said, with a little catch of her breath.
"I was wondering if you--any of you gentlemen had seen them?"
"Your man, Gus Carline an' that writin' feller, Terabon?" Jet asked,
without delicacy. Her cheeks flamed.
"Yes!" she whispered.
"Terabon took him down to Mendova or Memphis," Despard said. "Carline
was--was on the cabin and the boat lurched when the steamboat passing
drawed. He drapped over and hit a spark plug on the head!"
"Was he badly hurt?"
"Not much--kind of a lump, that's all."
She looked down at Fort Pillow Bluff. The pirates awaited her pleasure,
staring at her to their heart's content. They envied her husband and
Terabon; they felt the strangeness of the situation. She was following
those two men down. She was part of the river tide, drifting by; she had
shot Prebol, their pal, and had cleverly ascertained their knowledge of
him while insuring that they had fair warning.
Her boat drifted down till it was opposite them, and then, with quick
decision, she caught up a handy line, and said:
"I'm going to tie in a little while. I've been alone clear down from
Caruthersville; I want to talk to somebody!"
She threw the rope, and they caught and made it fast. They swung her
boat in, ran a plank from stern to bow, and Despard gave her his hand.
She came on board, and they sat on the stern deck to talk. Only one kind
of woman could have done that with safety, but she was that kind. She
had shot a man down for a look.
The three pirates took one of the fat young geese, plucked and dressed
it, and baked it in a hot oven, with dressing, sweet potatoes,
hot-bread, and a pudding which she mixed up herself.
For three hours they gossiped, and before she knew it, she had told them
about Prebol, about Parson Rasba introducing them. The pirates shouted
when she told of Jest's apology. With river frankness, they said they
thought a heap of Terabon, who minded his own business so cleverly.
"I like him, too," she admitted. "I was afraid you boys might make
trouble for Carline, though. He don't know much about people, treating
them right."
"He's one of those ignorant Up-the-Bankers," Despard said.
"Oh, I know him." She shrugged her shoulders a little bitterly.
As they ate the goose in camaraderie, the pirates took to warning and
advising her about the Lower River; they told her who would treat her
right, and who wouldn't. They especially warned her against stopping
anywhere near Island 37.
"They're bad there--and mean." Despard shook his head, gravely.
"I won't stop in there," Nelia promised. "River folks anybody can get
along with, but those Up-the-Bankers!"
"Hit's seo," Jet cried. "They don't have no feelings for nobody."
"You'll be dropping on down?" Nelia asked.
"D'rectly!" Cope admitted. "We 'lowed we'd stop into Mendova. You stop
in there an' see Palura; he'll treat you right. He was in the riveh
hisse'f once. You talk to him----"
"What did Terabon and Mr. Carline go on in? What kind of a boat?"
"A gasolene cruiser."
"Did he say where he'd be?"
"Terabon? No. Ask into Mendova or into Memphis. They can likely tell."
"Thank you, boys! I'm awful glad you've no hard feelings on account of
my shooting your partner; I couldn't know what good fellows you are.
We'll see you later."
Her smile bewitched them; she went aboard her boat, pulled over into the
main current, and floated away in the sunset--her favourite river hour.
After hours of argument, debate, doubts, they, too, pulled out and
floated past Fort Pillow.